The electroweak phase transition is investigated by means of the pertubatively calculated high temperature effective potential. An analytic result to order g⁴, λ² is presented for the Abelian Higgs model, the SU(2)-Higgs model and the standard model and a complete on-shell renormalization at zero temperature is performed. Higher order corrections are found to increase the strength of the first order phase transition in the non-Abelian model, opposite to the Abelian case. This effect is traced back to the infrared contributions from the typical non-Abelian diagrams. The dependence of several phase transition parameters on the Higgs mass is analyzed in detail. A new, gauge invariant, approach based on the composite field Φ^†Φ is introduced. This method, which supports the above Landau gauge results numerically, permits a conceptually simpler treatment of the thermodynamics of the phase transition. In particular, it enables a straightforward comparison with lattice data and the application of the Clausius-Clapeyron equation to the electroweak phase transition.